'every poet and every artist is an anti-social being'

"The point is, art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things one must steal, to be used against the established order. Once art becomes official and open to everyone, then it becomes the new academicism."

"If art is ever given the keys to the city, it will be because it's been so watered down, rendered so impotent, that it's not worth fighting for."

"And why did Plato say poets should be chased out of the republic? Precisely because every poet and every artist is an anti-social being. He's not that way because he wants to be ...
the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given. It isn't a principle one can lay down as something that should exist ...
If the idea of society is to dominate the idea of the individual, the individual must perish. Furthermore, there wouldn't be such a thing as a seer if there weren't a state trying to suppress him. It's only at that moment, under that pressure, that he becomes one. People reach the status of artist only after crossing the maximum number of barriers. So the arts should be discouraged, not encouraged."

p. 189
'Life with Picasso'
Francoise Gilot & Carlton Lake, 1964, Thomas Nelson